Fragile Conviction : Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan

From mice-eaten passports to fingerprint scanning: fluctuating state presence and ‘entangled documents’ along the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border

“…The strong and overarching presence of the Soviet state abruptly ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The period of transition from Soviet rule was accompanied by economic chaos and the dissolution of state systems (Pelkmans 2017). Under the transition period's 'shock therapy', which included liberalization of the market, privatization of collectively owned land, houses and state-owned companies, and significant cuts in state services, 'Kyrgyzstan's state system crumbled and fragmented' (28).…”

“…Drawing on personal connections, kin relations and patronage links were important in managing social, political and economic interests in Kyrgyzstan. The importance of networks and their function as a safety net, survival strategy and means for accessing resources in the post-Soviet context has been explored and acknowledged by many scholars (Ledeneva 1998;Werner 2000;Rasanayagam 2011;Pelkmans 2017). However, as a minority in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbeks had lost the position within the larger society that would allow them to draw on their kinship and networks as a resource in managing the bureaucratic state apparatus.…”

“…Much of this literature has highlighted the politicization of ethnic identity in Kyrgyzstan, along with growing nationalism in the country. Specifically, from 2005, 9 the Kyrgyz state pursued nationalistic policies that entailed gradual ethnicization of the Kyrgyz state apparatus as administrative offices were increasingly taken over and controlled by ethnic Kyrgyz (Pelkmans 2017). In 2010, this process intensified after ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, after which Uzbeks lost both their economic position and their political representatives in the local state administration (Ismailbekova 2013).…”

Postsocialism

“…Anthropologists working in this field seized the rare, perhaps unique, opportunity, exploring the thencurrent and developing theories and fields of anthropological interest: ontology and time (Buck-Morss 2000, Bernstein 2019); personhood and identity (Yurchak 2006, Kharkhordin 1999; environmental precarity (Brown 2013, Petryna 2013; economy, exchange, and property (Humphrey 2002, Verdery 2003, Hann 2002, Morris 2016; ethics, power, and sovereignty (Hemment 2015, Ledeneva 2006, Glaeser 2011, Dunn 2004, Zigon 2010; modernity and globalisation (Pomerantsev 2014, Collier 2011, Shevchenko 2009; religion and spirituality (Rodgers 2009, Lindquist 2005, Luehrmann 2011, Caldwell 2004, Wanner 2007, Pedersen 2011); borders and migration (Reeves 2014, Pelkmans 2017, Bloch 2017; race and gender (Dzenovska 2018, Ghodsee 2018; and emotion and affect (Oushakine 2009, Pesmen 2000, Lemon 2018;…”

“…To shoehorn postsocialism into the narrow rubric of area studies would test the category's limits on simple geographic grounds alone. The ethnographic fields detailed here have been located in Europe, but might easily have included Central Asia(Pelkmans 2017, Reeves 2014 or Mongolia(Empson 2011, Pedersen 2011. In any event, notwithstanding their physical locus, all of these sites are traversed by global forces, for example, the European Union funding that stipulates Latvian 'tolerance'; the self-improvement therapies and wellbeing philosophy imported from the US to the adolescent psychology clinics of St. Petersburg; the global assemblages of Dunn's Polish baby food standards; Buchanan's public fiscal theory that restructures Belaya Kalitva's social infrastructure; Bloch's young women's ideals of 'plastic sexuality without complexes'.…”